http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/12/15/the-return-of-the-grand-narrative/ Secularism, religion, and the public sphere Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:07:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/12/15/the-return-of-the-grand-narrative/comment-page-1/#comment-74536 Kocku von Stuckrad Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:55:21 +0000 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/?p=27838#comment-74536 It is quite remarkable that scholars believe in the Axial Age but find the Age of Pisces (or the Age of Aquarius that is supposed to follow it) a ridiculous concept. In fact, there are some striking parallels between those approaches. Here are three: (a) Both are too vague to be useful categories for historical analysis. (b) Because they are vaguely defined and because there is so much historical evidence that runs against the assumed characteristics, people pick and choose to find fitting examples, or introduce a “saddle period” to iron out discrepencies. (c) Both — implicitly or explicitly — assume an anonymous driving force behind human history. In the case of Bellah’s Axial Age it is cultural evolution (much more difficult to demonstrate than biological evolution); in the case of astrology it is the doctrine of correspondences and synchronicities.
The major difference between those two is that Bellah links the notion of Axial Age to the theory of evolution and thus to an attribution of meaning to history that is commonly accepted today, while the doctrine of correspondences and synchronicities is not part of accepted knowledge anymore in Western culture. In short, the difference is in discursive mechanisms of the organization of knowledge, not in the quality of the hypotheses involved.

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